Sheaf Saint

At least he can hit a powerful shot on target. That's more than anyone else in the squad seems capable of. His 3 tonight may not have been far enough away from the keeper to beat him. But they were all well struck and there's always a chance the keeper will spill one.

That is all on Ralph for his baffling starting lineup. It was the same last week at Sheff Utd, but lucky for us their attacking players are terrible. Bertrand is the best defender in the squad. If he's fit enough to play an entire half then why isn't he on from t he start? Yoshida is the best CB in the squad, but despite playing really well last week he gets left out in favour of our worst player on the pitch at Bramall Lane. With the pace of the Bournemouth attackers, that was never going to end well. I'll cut Danso some slack because it seems he hasn't even been allowed to play a single half in one position yet, but he was woeful at RB. How the hell did it take 45 minutes and a 2-goal deficit (lucky it wasn't 3) for Ralph to identify that. We won the ball in their half very well and dominated the possession, but sadly every one of our decent chances fell to JWP who seems to be utterly incapable of hitting a moving ball properly. Boufal had a couple of decent long range efforts but couldn't get either of them far enough away from the keeper. Our best player tonight by far. As for that gift at the end. Gunn needs to have a word with himself after that. Woeful.

Summed up in 5 words... Bournemouth defended well; we didn't.

Bertrand coming on for the 2nd half

Overall, I don't think we're playing that badly. We're winning the ball in their half and making all the running and dictating the tempo of the game. But that defence is f*cking hideous. Case in point - at one stage, under no pressure, Vest messed up his jump and gave it straight back, then was far too slow to react when the ball came back in again. He's a massive liability. After not putting a foot wrong last Saturday, Maya must be right miffed at being left out again in favour of this charlatan. What on earth has happened with Bertrand? If he's leaving then why is he even on the bench? If he's fit enough to play then get him on FFS.

****sake. Our defence is f*cking hopeless. Get Yoshida on for Vestergard and swap Cedric and Danso round. It's so simple.

I'm starting to have my doubts though. Vestergard scares the bejeesus out of me every time the ball goes near him. Why can't Ralph see his is a very weak link?

Yeah agreed. I still consider Yoshida to be the best CB in our squad currently, so his continual exclusion is quite a mystery. But I have faith in Ralph, unlike his 2-3 predecessors. So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

10/11 on Bet365. They must be taking the local derby nature of the game into account. On the same night, they have got Leicester (1 point above us in the PL) at 11/20 away to Luton (who are a division above Pompey).

Two very interesting stats from the BBC... https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49684490 Bournemouth have never won a match at Southampton in any competition (D6, L9). Southampton have lost their last four home league games on a Friday, although three of those were in the Championship between 2007 and 2012.

I suspect he is referring to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49752486

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49760230

It's interesting to see some of the comments made back when this thread was started. I'm very pleased to see he has regained the kind of form that won him POTS in 2017. Long may it continue.

That's not surprising about Djenepo. When he came back on to the pitch to celebrate with the rest of the players on Saturday I noticed his thigh was heavily strapped up, and in his post-macth interview Ralph praised the physios for getting him available to play in the first place.

While this is factually correct, it's fair to say that a large number of voters only actually vote for the party and don't care who is wearing the rosette.

Just watched Johnson's interview with Laura Kuenssberg. What a car crash. He just isn't capable of giving any kind of proper answers to anything. Just keeps waffling on about being positive. He's a f*cking embarrassment of a PM.

We rode our luck a bit on Saturday though. JV in particular looked more than shaky at times, and Bournemouth have much better attacking players than Sheff Utd do. I will be very surprised if we keep another clean sheet.

I didn't watch the game but they seem to have done very well to fight back today. If it had stayed as it was at HT they would have been looking at 1 point and a -8 GD after 5 games. As we know from last season, failing to get the points on the board in the early season will result in a season-long struggle.

2-2 now.

No. He could have controlled it. Unlikely I know, given the pace of the ball and the general lack of quality throughout the Utd team, but we'll never know.

Watford 0-2 down at HT. Looks like they are in for a long, hard season.

They're currently 3-1 up against Everton.

Would be a bit harsh to drop Boufal after his performance yesterday.

Quite. It's amusing reading that thread from their forum complaining they had the better chances and should have won. The only really clear chance they had was when McGoaldrought got away from JV but fluffed his shot and made it easy for Gunn. Their keeper made the best save of the match from Adams' header in the first half. And his earlier shot against the post was really unlucky, cos he hit that superbly. His goals will undoubtedly start to come soon.

His arm was out in a very unnatural position and it prevented a clear scoring opportunity as without the touch off his arm the ball would have fallen to the attacker at the back post. Agree about that corner though. That was bizarre. Long deliberately let it go out because the last touch quite clearly came off the Utd player.